Memetics-based English Pronunciation Teaching In Higher Vocational College

Since pronunciation is particularly important in language study,its teaching pedagogy has always been a research focus for linguists and language teachers.Memetics provides a new perspective for the study of English pronunciation teaching.Since memetics was introduced into China from abroad,Chinese scholars have tried to apply this theory in foreign language teaching classes.Previous studies on pronunciation teaching from the perspective of memetics mainly focus on theoretical exploration and few have conducted empirical research.According to the memetics theory,the life circle of meme involves four stages:assimilation,retention,expression and transmission.The four stages can be applied to the four-stage teaching procedures of pronunciation:imitation,repetition,recitation and evaluation This study adopts the four-stage teaching procedures to examine whether such memetics-based pronunciation teaching can improve students' English pronunciation in higher vocational colleges by answering the following three research questions:1)Can the memetics-based teachin,g of imitation,repetition,recitation and evaluation improve students' use of pronunciation learning strategies?2)Can the memetics-based teaching of imitation,repetition,recitation and evaluation help students improve their English pronunciation?3)What kind of pronunciation learning feedback do students have after the experiment?The experiment was conducted in two freshmen classes of English majors from a vocational college in Hainan:one is as the experimental class and the other as the control class.It lasted sixteen weeks.The students of the two classes used New Horizon English 1:Viewing,Listening&Speaking(2nd Edition)as is required by this college.There were 44 students in the experimental class and 43 in the control class.During the experiment,the experimental class adopted the memetics-based teaching procedures of imitation,repetition,recitation and evaluation while learning the memes of the minimal pair,rhythm,stress and intonation.In the control class,the audio-lingual approach was used by requiring the students to read words after the teacher.Before and after the treatment,students from both the experimental and control classes were surveyed with regard to their pronunciation learning strategies.Besides,their pronunciation proficiency was tested.The results of the questionnaires,the pre-test,the post-test and the interview reveal that(1)The memetics-based teaching procedures of imitation,repetition,recitation and evaluation can improve students' use of pronunciation learning strategies.(2)The students in the experimental class can obtain significantly higher pronunciation scores in minimal pair,rhythm,stress and intonation than that of the control class.(3)The interview reveals that the students from the experimental class show much preference to the adopted pronunciation teaching method while the students from the control class have the desire on their teacher to adopt a new pronunciation teaching method.To sum up,the memetics-based teaching of imitation,repetition,recitation and evaluation are effective in improving students' pronunciation proficiency.Due to the limitations of experimental size and time span,the research results only reflect students' pronunciation learning at this certain stage and under these experimental conditions.Hopefully this research can shed light on the pronunciation teaching so as to improve the efficiency of English pronunciation teaching.